A wide variety of consumer products are packaged in bottles, vials, cans, or other containers using conveyor systems and automated equipment, to increase the efficiency and repeatability of the packaging process, and the resulting quality of the delivered product. In some cases, the size and scale of bottles, vials, cans, or containers are able to be manipulated through an automated system of conveyors and handling equipment without difficulty. In other cases, the size, weight, or shape of the containers may present more difficulty for automated handling systems, particularly as speeds of automated equipment are increased for higher throughput. For example, empty, light weight plastic containers may not have enough mass to keep themselves upright, when accelerated along a conveyor system, around corners, and through handling equipment, and can easily tip, jam, fly off, or orient themselves awkwardly and inconsistently for the handling equipment. If such containers are already filled with a product, such actions may result in spilling some or all of the container's contents.
One solution that has been implemented involves placing such containers, bottles, vials, or cans within a carrier, or puck. This provides stability and consistent orientation throughout the handling system, and particularly at critical steps such as filling, labeling, weighing, capping, and the like. A carrier or puck, may accommodate multiple sizes and shapes of containers through careful design of its interior, or through the use of tailored inserts. In the example of automated pharmacy equipment for filling prescriptions, pucks are used to hold prescription bottles or vials of various sizes. The pucks provide a consistent weight and shape that can be manipulated by the handling equipment, while keeping the container upright and in a known orientation. Using technology that can identify each individual puck and container combination, such as, but not limited to, bar code identification or radio-frequency identification (RFID), the automated equipment is capable of filling each container with the correct medication from a matrix of dispensers as required by each prescription. As the individual filled container associated with each prescription proceeds from the dispensing station to subsequent operations, such as labeling and capping, it is commonplace for adjacent pucks to hold bottles filled with entirely different and unrelated prescriptions.
One problem that is observed in automated systems as described above, occurs as the pucks bump into one another along the course of the conveyor system. Occasionally, collisions between pucks cause individual pills, capsules, tablets or medications to jump out of a bottle. In a high volume operation, this event can happen frequently enough to produce a sizeable quantity of medications around the floor of the conveyor equipment. Such spilled medications must be discarded. In some cases, very expensive medications may be discarded. Also, some of the prescriptions that leave the facility may be short of the correct quantity.
Another possible result may be cross-contamination, where the momentum incurred by a dose of medication causes it to jump from one bottle to another. While the probability of this occurrence is much lower than landing on the floor, the liability associated with a dose of the wrong medication cross-contaminating a prescription may be significant, and high volume automated operations increase the opportunity for cross-contamination to occur.